1. Field
Exemplary embodiments broadly relate to a method and an apparatus for receiving contents through multiple channels, and more specifically, relate to a method and an apparatus for providing appropriate contents to a user device.
2. Description of the Related Art
As various mobile devices such as smart phones and tablet PCs have come into wide use, interest in a technique for providing multimedia contents to different devices such as TVs, smart phones, and tablet PCs has been increased.
Particularly, if a mobile device such as a smart phone and a tablet PC is provided with multimedia contents, it is not easy to apply a download and play scheme that enables a device to first download all multimedia contents and then start playing the downloaded multimedia contents to the mobile device due to its limit on a storage capacity. Therefore, such a mobile device can be provided with multimedia contents by a streaming scheme.
If the multimedia contents are provided by means of a streaming scheme, it is important to maintain a constant transmission rate of the contents for smooth playing. However, the multimedia contents are provided from a single contents server, the transmission rate may vary depending on a state of the contents server and a state of a network, and, thus, a steaming service may not be provided smoothly.
As prior art techniques concerning this, Korean Patent No. 0648659 describes a method of controlling a video transmission rate by calculating a video transmission rate capable of minimizing a cue delay and loss in video flow based on a forward delay time, a reverse delay time, a playback rate, and a bandwidth of a network during video streaming transmission and Korean Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2011-0015898 describes that each routing node monitors a link status with respect to adjacent routing nodes, detects a loss in a packet that contains video data, and controls a video transmission rate depending on the extent of the loss in the packet.
However, according to such prior art techniques, if contents received from multiple contents providing servers are transmitted by means of a streaming scheme, it is impossible to maintain a constant transmission rate of all contents.